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MANASSAS, Va. (ChurchMilitant.com) – President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off their 2024 campaign with a rally centered on abortion.
The event, which took place Tuesday at George Mason University’s Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas, Virginia, marked their first campaign rally of the year.
Call for Pro-Abortion Candidates
Biden urged American voters to elect pro-abortion candidates in the upcoming elections.
“Give me a Democratic House of Representatives and give me a bigger, bigger Democratic Senate where we will pass a new law restoring and protecting Roe v. Wade, and I will sign it up immediately,” he proclaimed.
“As long as I have the powers of the presidency, know this — if Congress passes a national abortion [ban] bill, I will veto it,” Biden added.
Biden further opined that abortion-minded mothers without immediate access to legal abortion on demand are the real victims.
The Biden-Harris rally aimed to mobilize voters based on Democrats’ unwavering dedication to abortion.
“Today in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to travel hundreds of miles to get basic health care, forced to go to court to plead to help to protect themselves and their ability to then have children in the future,” he claimed.
Kamala Harris also addressed the crowd, criticizing former President Donald Trump for imposing restrictions on baby killing during his tenure.
Abortion and Down-Ballot Races
The rally took place ahead of down-ballot races that could impact the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. Several House seats currently held by Democrats are open this November. The outcome of these races could have far-reaching consequences for the balance of power in Congress. Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the House, with one vacancy.
News Report: Sacrilege in Delaware
The Biden-Harris rally aimed to mobilize voters based on Democrats’ unwavering dedication to abortion. It is a rallying point central to the Democrat Party platform that they believe will attract pro-abortion voters and help them wrest control of the House.
The Democratic Party has been successful in previous campaigns and state ballot initiatives focused on abortion. These pro-death successes have solidified the party’s commitment to abortion.
Canon 915 and US Bishops
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, human life “must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” and that willing abortion “either as an end or a means is gravely contrary to the moral law.” Section 915 of canon law further states that individuals who remain “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” — which constitutes support for abortion — are “not to be admitted to holy communion.”
As a whole, the American bishops have never applied this law of the Church to public figures like Joe Biden, who identifies as Catholic while publicly denying and actively working against Church teachings on many topics such as abortion.
I certainly pray for him every day.
In November 2021, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church.” The document, without mentioning politicians like Joe Biden, discusses the Eucharist and the need to defend the unborn. Five cardinals, six archbishops and other U.S. prelates — 68 in all — had agreed in writing months earlier not to entertain denying the sacrament to pro-abort politicians.
Soon after the USCCB document was released, a group of self-professed Catholic Democrats wrote the second of two letters doubling down on their support for child killing.
Around that time, Cdl. Wilton Gregory of the Washington archdiocese expressed he had no intention of withholding Communion from President Biden.
Biden’s former bishop in Wilmington, Delaware, Francis Malooly, was also fine with permitting Communion for Biden, saying in 2008, he did “not intend to get drawn into partisan politics” or “intend to politicize the Eucharist as a way of communicating Catholic Church teaching.”
Biden’s current bishop in Wilmington, William Koenig, who was appointed in 2021, danced around the topic in a press conference at the time, never indicating whether he would deny Communion to Biden.
“I certainly pray for him every day,” Koenig said. “I would certainly be open to having a conversation in the future with him.”
To date, there is no indication Biden has been banned from Communion in the Wilmington diocese.
However, the stance of individual bishops within the Catholic Church does vary slightly on the application of canon 915.
In May 2022, for example, Abp. Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco issued a decree barring Nancy Pelosi, who at the time was U.S. House speaker, from receiving Communion based on canon 915 and her pro-abortion stance.
With Biden’s latest push for codifying abortion in the United States, it remains uncertain whether the bishops as a whole will reconsider their stance on adhering to Church law.
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